


Ambivalent Friction

by unknowableroom_archivist



Category: Harry Potter - J. K. Rowling
Genre: Humor, Romance
Language: English
Status: Completed
Published: 2006-07-04
Updated: 2006-07-04
Packaged: 2019-01-19 23:27:38
Rating: Teen And Up Audiences
Warnings: Creator Chose Not To Use Archive Warnings
Chapters: 1
Words: 1,049
Publisher: archiveofourown.org
Story URL: https://archiveofourown.org/works/12420420
Author URL: https://archiveofourown.org/users/unknowableroom_archivist/pseuds/unknowableroom_archivist
Summary: "Have you ever been in love? Horrible isn't it? It makes you so vulnerable. It opens your chest and it opens up your heart and it means that someone can get inside you and mess you up. You build up all these defenses, you build up a whole suit of armor, so that nothing can hurt you, then one stupid ...





	Ambivalent Friction

**Author's Note:**

> Note from ChristyCorr, the archivist: this story was originally archived at [Unknowable Room](http://fanlore.org/wiki/Unknowable_Room), a Harry Potter archive active from 2005-2016. To preserve the archive, I began manually importing its works to the AO3 as an Open Doors-approved project after May 2017. I e-mailed all creators about the move and posted announcements, but may not have reached everyone. If you are (or know) this creator, please contact me using the e-mail address on [Unknowable Room collection profile](http://www.archiveofourown.org/collections/unknowableroom).

  
Author's notes: 1  


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_"Have you ever been in love? Horrible isn't it? It makes you so vulnerable. It opens your chest and it opens up your heart and it means that someone can get inside you and mess you up. You build up all these defenses, you build up a whole suit of armor, so that nothing can hurt you, then one stupid person, no different from any other stupid person, wanders into your stupid life...You give them a piece of you. They didn't ask for it. They did something dumb one day, like kiss you or smile at you, and then your life isn't your own anymore. Love takes hostages. It gets inside you. It eats you out and leaves you crying in the darkness, so simple a phrase like 'maybe we should be just friends' turns into a glass splinter working its way into your heart. It hurts. Not just in the imagination. Not just in the mind. It's a soul-hurt, a real gets-inside-you-and-rips-you-apart pain. I hate love."_ **-Rose Walker, talking to Desire about love in _"Sandman: The Kindly Ones."_**

Prologue

It was the kind of summer where everything was shifting.  Even in the still and unbearable heat of Dover, the luminescent blue sky was reflecting the mercurial show of lights the sunlight always seemed to cause on the waves of the ocean roaring 10 miles east of a small town called Bennett.  

A small boy, one of many victims of the humid heat, had decided to leave the confines of his tree house and lay under the shade of the oak tree in the yard.  The day was unlikely to be eventful, and was predicted to not only be the hottest of the summer, but also the most agonizingly boring.

Luckily, weather men made mistakes, and this couldn’t have been a bigger one.  

The mild forest surrounding the Black house was still, which was unusual even on the heated day.  No animals were sifting around through the underbrush, and the birds had given up chirping and flown off to find a deeper forest to nest in complete shade.

Without warning, a small blue bundle yelped as it dropped down to the ground, not further then 10 feet from where the boy lay.  The boy jumped up, his nerves on an edge as he thought, _Could the_ sky _be falling?_ Before he thought once again _; don’t be daft, that’s impossible!_

He watched the small bundle detangle itself and get up from the ground in blue shorts and a light blue shirt.  If the small bundle had not had dark brown hair and the unmistakable look of a girl, the boy would have thought the sky truly _was_ falling.

“What are you looking at?”  The girl scorned accusingly.  She couldn’t have been a day older then seven.

“You just fell from…” the boy looked up towards the cluster of oaks and let out an involuntary whistle, “the oaks!”

“Yea, so?”  Her frown had gone, and she began to inspect the boy as if she hadn’t even spoken.  “What’s your name?”

“Sirius Black.  And yours?”

“Seriously?”  The girl cackled at her own wicked joke, “You’re named _Sirius_!  How strange.”

Slightly irritated, he continued, “What’s your name?”  

“Radella”, she said offhandedly, already eyeing the tree house looming 15 feet above them.

“You have yellow eyes.”

Radella snapped back to Sirius.  “I do _not_ have yellow eyes.  My mum says they’re golden with flecks of brown and it looks very pretty.”

Sirius scoffed, “Well your mum only says that to make you feel better about your cat eyes!  Anyway, if they’re golden with brown flecks, then they’re backwards! You’re supposed to have brown eyes with golden flecks!”

“You’re the one whose backwards!  Your just **_ordinary_**.  And they are not _cat_ eyes!  Do you see me with a long tail and pointy ears on my head?”

Sirius entertained the idea of a long black tail jutting out of Radella’s shorts and laughed.  “I still think you’re strange.”

“So speaks the one and only named _Serious_.”

“Hey…hey where are you going?”  Sirius pondered aloud as Radella began to climb the rickety wood nailed to the tree leading up to the tree house.

“I’m going up there”, came her muffled voice from climbing.

“You can’t go there, that’s my tree house!”

“So?  You should always share.”

He was stumped.  It was true.  His mum always _did_ say Sirius should share.  

Then again, his mother’s best friend was a glass of sherry, and little trust and believability could be found in her barking words.

The young boy struggled with himself, “Well…it’s really hot up there, so I’m not going!”

“OK”, came the reply as Radella made her way over the floor board and hoisted herself into the tree house.

He sighed at the sky and looked back down at his palms in wonderment.  Well, there wasn’t anything better to do.  Filled with curiosity, Sirius followed the most peculiar girl up and into the trees.

\--

“What were you doing up there?”  A young Sirius watched the little girl whiz around the small vicinity of his tree house, tossing aside posters of Quidditch and studying the box of dung bombs with interest.

“There where?”

“In the trees?”

“Just climbing.”

“You do that for fun?”

Radella turned around, her eyes wide with pleasure.  “You want to know a secret?”

Sirius nodded his head eagerly and stepped closer.

“Yesterday I was playing with one of my Mum’s necklaces”, she hushed her voice, “And I started tossing it and all of a sudden it landed in the tree.  So I wanted to get it back down before Mum saw it was gone.  It’s her favorite pearl necklace”, she whispered.

Sirius looked at her sheepish grin and returned it with one of his own.  Of course, it was natural reasoning.  Mother’s could never find out those kinds of things.

“It’s so hot today”, Sirius said as he wiped his brow.

“Did you know there’s a creek in these woods?”

“Yea, but I’m not aloud to go.”

“And that matters because…?”  Sirius gave Radella an abashed look, caught off guard by her slippery attitude as a seven year old.  With a slight apprehension, he answered, “I suppose it doesn’t matter.”  

She smiled at him genially, “Good, then follow me.” 


End file.
